Vintage Winifred Mason Chenet d’Haïti Modernist Brooch Pin Copper & Brass Wire

Vintage Winifred Mason Chenet d’Haïti Modernist Brooch Pin Copper & Brass Wire

Winifred Mason Chenet d’Haïti (1912 -1933) was a pioneering African American jewelry designer and metalsmith, best known for her innovative work in the 1940s and 1950s and for being one of the first commercially successful Black jewelry designers in the United States.

She began her career as a teacher and craftsperson, working with copper and brass, and became recognized for her hand-wrought, Afro-Caribbean–inspired jewelry. Her work combined folk, modernist, and African diaspora aesthetics. In the 1940s, she opened a studio in Greenwich Village and sold her work in department stores and galleries — a groundbreaking achievement for a Black woman artist at that time. Her jewelry stood out for its organic shapes, symbolic motifs, and handmade quality.

After marrying Haitian artist Jean Chenet, she moved to Haiti in the early 1950s and became deeply immersed in the local art and craft scene. There, she found